Yeah yeah yeah, Arcata made a list about being a cool place to live. Or something.

Maybe Arcata could qualify as one of the U.S.’s “Best Places for Overnight Camping.” Sure seems to be plenty of urban camping enthusiasts around there.

In other news about cities that actually deserve to be on award lists, one U.S. city in particular has received a lot of recognition over the past few years. I am talking, of course, about Houston, Texas.

Yeah I didn’t really see that coming either. What makes it such a nice place to live? The whole “everything is bigger” mantra? Proximity to the Alamo? I’m sure George Strait might have a tough time there, but since I can’t get a date – let alone a girlfriend – for the life of me, the ex factor wouldn’t be so bad.

I sniffed around the web some and found an obvious answer: Houston has extremely lax regulations when it comes to zoning and land use. In fact, according to the Houston Planning and Development Department website, the city of Houston “does not have zoning” and “City codes do not address land use.”

Just imagine! A prosperous, well-planned mega-city (4th largest in the U.S.) that does not dictate where its citizens can build a business or home.

Our inept government officials should take heed of this and revisit some of the ridiculous zoning policies they come up with, instead of trying to tell us what we can and cannot do with our own property. I’m not saying that we should try to be like Houston – Heck, you could even catch me saying zoning and building codes are great. They sure protect us from all the big-development assholes that are messing with our small-town feel, environment be damned (or at least zoning and codes would protect us if the planning commission weren’t so busy brown nosing the same people they’re supposed to regulate). But as it stands now, looks like we are set for some pretty ass-backwards regulations once the new GPU hits that will screw over us poor folk too. Something needs to be done about that.

Or maybe we should just continue limiting the growth and prosperity of our area. Tough call, really.

Houston is a shit hole! Lack of a real building plan is obvious in any part of the city, it doesn’t make any sense from a layout perspective. I personally know a number of people who moved to Houston from Humboldt and turned around and came right back